


a spark in a sea of gray

by panglosian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Album fic, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Music, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art, Artists, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Coldplay, Coldplay References, Dystopia, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), Graffiti, Langst, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Painting, Rebellion, Songfic, Supernatural Elements, Superpowers, Tags May Change, just angst in general, kangst, klangst, mylo xyloto au, street art
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2018-12-20 21:38:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panglosian/pseuds/panglosian
Summary: In a world devoid of creative freedom, the city of Silencia sits covered in black clouds. Under the cover of night, sparkers emerge to paint the city with their lasting spirit - the last members of a rebellion that the government intends on destroying. The ruthless silencers who patrol the streets of Silencia have only two jobs: keep the city safe from the monstrous feeders that flock to color and beauty, and capture the sparkers dead or alive. Keith is the government's top silencer, who has never known anything but blind obedience. After a chance encounter with Lance McClain, the city's most wanted sparker, he begins to question everything. As he's thrown headfirst into a new world full of color, light, and freedom, Keith must make a choice between the life he's always known and the life he's always wanted.Sometimes all it takes is a spark.





	1. Mylo Xyloto

**Author's Note:**

> It was only a matter of time until this fic happened tbh
> 
> I've been throwing around this idea for a couple of weeks now. I've been wanting to do an album fic for a while, it was just a matter of which album I wanted to write for. I've always been a massive fan of coldplay, and mylo xyloto is one of my favorites by them, so writing this just made sense. 
> 
> A little bit of backstory: mylo xyloto is a concept album which was released by coldplay in 2011. It deals with the importance of creative freedom, the necessity of art in the modern world, and the dangers of oppression. The album's success prompted a series of six comics to be made, with a full story and fleshed-out characters that make the story that the album tells more specific.
> 
> This fic is not based on any of that. Well, not much of it, at least.
> 
> This fic uses the backbone of the story. The city of Silencia, the feeders, the silencers, and the sparkers are pretty much the only things that are similar to the comics. Most of the elements of this fic I've made up myself, and the overall plot, theme, and characters are based on how I feel when i listen to the album. I've analyzed both the albums lyrics and musical tone to tell the most well-rounded story that I can, and I hope that you guys enjoy what I've come up with!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's set the tone
> 
> this chapter's song is [mylo xyloto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRxtFTozMwI)

In the farthest reaches of the land, Sonorous stands tall.

Wherever the light touches the city, each building gleams like an individual star, illuminating the landscape with an ethereal glow. The landscape around the city is flat, curving upwards towards the outskirts as the sprawling metropolis seems to rise out of the earth, a goliath in the emptiness.

As the last vestiges of night ebb away, the sun paints the sky orange and pink, the hues gently brushing the edges of the horizon. Slowly but surely, the people of Sonorous begin to emerge from their beds. Light streaks through windows, painting floors and washing over walls. As the sunlight grows stronger, clearing away the shadow of the early dawn, the color comes out.

The buildings of Sonorous are ever-changing beasts. Every night their images shift, drawn over by those adventurous souls who scale ladders at midnight and use their gifts to paint the city. No mural is ever permanent, and if they aren’t changed entirely over the course of the night, they are certainly altered. Additions are made, colors are mixed, messages are etched, and creativity blossoms over every available surface that the city has to offer. The bike racks, the backs of the subway signs, the sidewalks, the rough walls lining the alleyways – everything was adorned with artwork individual to the creator, and no two pieces were exactly alike.

From a distance, the city looked quiet and pristine.

From the inside, it was a cacophonous masterpiece.

As the citizens of Sonorous rouse from their slumbers, pull on their clothes, pour their coffee, and go about their morning, they look up and examine the metamorphosis that the buildings underwent overnight. There is always something new to look at, after all, and it makes sitting at the bus stop that much more interesting.

Some of the murals are painted on, slathered over whatever was underneath. Sometimes, the artists would use chalk, other times spray paint. In fact, dozens of different mediums are utilized; occasionally, one unlucky soul makes the mistake of leaning against a wall in the early hours of the morning and peels off the surface, paint stuck to their back or smudges of ink on their collar.

Most of the murals, however, aren’t done by hand. No, they are done by spark.

Sparks are different from regular art. They don’t take time or patience to create. They don’t require preparation, time, or intention. They just _are_ – beautiful, vibrant, resolute. Sometimes, they even take up entire sides of buildings. The color doesn’t sit on top of the canvas; rather, it embeds itself into walls and asphalt and windows, as if it was meant to be there from the start. It can’t be removed, only painted over, creating layer upon layer of fleeting artwork that never lasts more than a week.

There is only one mural that is never touched. In the center of the city, on the side of the tallest building which faced the rising sun, a massive blotch of swirling red and blue stains the metal. The hues, however old they are, never lost their bright tint, and they brave the wind and the rain to maintain the mural they form.

Other artists have claimed the space around the mural with their own work, but nobody ever uses their gift to cover up the massive piece of art. It’s an unspoken rule among sparkers and artists alike: the mural must remain untouched. Occasionally, a piece of another mural curls into a far corner, swirling around the perimeter of the piece, but no stroke ever delves farther than a foot into the masterpiece.

The red and blue tinges of the mural swirl together to form two figures, silhouetted against an ornate background of bursts and flourishes. The two colors collide where the two figures meet and twine around one another, pushing and pulling in a circular motion like the tide. Onlookers swear that the mural itself is moving, trapped in an eternal dance between the two subjects, but the piece itself remains stagnant on the side of the building.

Some say that the mural is over a hundred years old. Others say that it has barely been around for a generation, and that they clearly remember a time when it wasn’t there. The only consensus seems to be that it is far and away the most beautiful piece of art in all of Sonorous, and is something to be revered rather than questioned.

There are only a few people left in Sonorous who truly remember the origin of the mural. These people, who had been gifted with extended longevity thanks to their vibrant sparks, recall the days when the colorful streets of the city were darkened. They fondly remember the days of war, of rebellion, and of the budding beauty that was the first seeds of Sonorous in the minds of the oppressed.

One particular soul, an ancient woman who lives at the top of the second tallest building in the city, looks out upon the stretching expanse of Sonorous and smiles. Her dark skin has withered over time, and her pearly hair has lost all of its sheen, but her blue eyes remains young. Her spark has allowed her to live the longest, to see the most in her many years, and thanks to that she was able to lead the people of Sonorous in the way she always dreamed she would.

She knows better than anyone just how important freedom is. She had lived the first twenty years of her life without it, and she will protect the freedom of her people to her last. She upholds the memory of the brave souls she’s outlived, and most of all, she keeps the color alive.

Countless visitors ask her why she lives at the top of the second tallest building in Sonorous. They ask, “Why not just live at the top of the tallest? You can see the city best from up there, and there are no buildings blocking your view. Why do you settle for this?”

Each time, she smiles wryly, youth glinting in her eyes. She turns her eyes towards the window, where part of her view of the city is obscured by the building. She gets up on shaky legs, ambles over to the glass, and traces her fingers over the edges of the great red-and-blue mural, where it remains forever plastered to the building right in front of her apartment.

She takes a single shaky, reverent breath and says, “So I can see my boys every day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try and be regular with my updates, but I'm going to be busy this coming semester so I'm not going to rope myself into a set schedule. I'll get new chapters out every couple of weeks at least, so stay tuned kids
> 
> If you want to talk about this fic, or about anything else in general, i'm on tumblr at [panglosian](http://panglosian.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Huge shoutout to my beta [rhys](http://seabreezy.tumblr.com/) who keeps putting up with my shit :)


	2. Hurts Like Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written in graffiti on a bridge in the park  
> do you ever get the feeling  
> that you're missing  
> the mark?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the first chapter that contains elements of the actual story. The first chapter was a prologue of sorts, so buckle down for this one kids
> 
> this chapter's song is [hurts like heaven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bECRafNtY_s)

With one deft slash, Keith cut down his twentieth feeder of the day.

The black monster disintegrated before his eyes, its body reduced to a flurry of black smoke that quickly dissipated in the early morning air. The wind that whipped his hair around his face was crisp as the city of Silencia made the transition between summer and fall. He knew he was supposed to have his helmet equipped, but he hated how it cut off his peripheral vision and bombarded his senses with images, scans, and data. It was too much – his instincts were enough to get the job done.

His red blade retracted without a sound, returning to its usual curved form in his hand. As he turned around and clipped his bayard to his side, he could just faintly see the faint glimmer of light on the horizon where the sun attempted to break through the thick layer of cloud that perpetually covered Silencia. It was weird, Keith _knew_ the sun existed – otherwise, they would all be dead – but in all his nineteen years he had never once seen it; at least, not in full. He would catch glimpses of it through the clouds, a heavenly beacon in the sky overhead, but it would disappear as quickly as it had come.

Not that he minded much. The dark, dismal city was all he’d ever known. As long as he had his work, his health, and his safety, thoughts of the sun remained few and far-between.

He hurried towards the mouth of the alley. When he emerged, spotting the rest of his group, he quickly equipped his helmet, the thin metal contraption folding around his head like an exoskeleton. He hated the way it felt around his face, but if the others knew he was fighting feeders without it – and that he was avoiding their transmissions, _whoops_ – they would surely report him. He had a very clean record, thank you very much, and he wanted to keep it that way.

“Kogane,” the squad leader said as he approached, blinking the sunspots out of his eyes that popped up when he was bombarded by images from his helmet. “Did you get the last of them?”

“Yeah,” Keith nodded. “This area is clear.”

The squad leader made a pleased sound. “Good. Denrak, report back to base and debrief the others on our success. We’ll be richly rewarded for this one.”

The other silencers hummed proudly, and though Keith couldn’t see their faces, he could imagine the smug looks they sported.

He scoffed. Being a silencer wasn’t _just_ about the reward.

As the others tapped the sides of their helmets, turning off their scanners for the night, the squad leader turned back to Keith and said, “Do you mind hanging back to cover us?”

Keith narrowed his eyes, knowing the leader couldn’t see him, and said, “That’s not necessary. I got them all.”

“You can never be too careful, especially around here,” the squad leader replied, his voice wary. “The outskirts are a dangerous place. I don’t want to lose any more men today.”

Reluctantly, Keith gave a slow nod, and watched as the group converged and moved in unison towards the main part of the street, where there was enough light to ensure their safety. No matter how much Keith hated it, he knew that the squad leader was right: the outskirts of Silencia were home to the greatest number of feeders in the city, and it was their job to not only protect the citizens that were left after the Great War, but to stay alive in the process.

The war, which had transpired generations before Keith was born and lasted almost twelve years, was fought between the old government and the new. The old government encouraged freedom of expression and artistic liberty, allowing artwork to cover their streets uncontrolled and unmonitored. Eventually, the multitude of creative energies that the city gave off attracted the feeders – monstrous, black shadows that were so far removed from color that they craved it, ripped into it with their claws and left only chaos in their wake. The scourge of feeders went on for years, causing thousands upon thousands of people to lose their lives.

The new government rose up against the old, insisting that they had to eliminate color and creative expression in order to preserve what little they had left, but the old government stuck to their wits, and the Great War began. The new government replaced the old, and for the good of everyone, eliminated creative expression and created the initiative that produced silencers – people like Keith who destroyed feeders before they reached the populated parts of the city.

That wasn’t his only job, however, and as he did his sweep of the area, he was reminded of that fact when he rounded a corner and was met with an explosion of color.

His eyes slowly trailed up the wall, his gaze tracing over the swirls and splashes that adorned the previously blank wall, washing it over with brightness. The edges of the piece glowed, indicating that not only was it new, but it wasn’t natural.

It was the work of a sparker.

Keith tapped the earpiece of his helmet and said, “Ulaz, are you there?”

When he released the button, he was met by a moment of static before a voice came through loud and clear. _“I hear you, Kogane. What’s the situation?”_

“We’ve got a spark,” he said. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the work of art, like it would be gone as soon as he decided to blink or glance away. “Behind the old warehouse on 103rd Street. It’s a big one.”

_“Do you think that’s what attracted the feeders?”_

“I can’t be sure. We’ll do a full investigation later. Just get a team out here for now and get this thing off the wall before it draws anything.”

_“Roger that.”_

He released the button for the last time as he released his bayard from his hip once again and extended it to its full form. Most silencers liked to carry guns, but he preferred his sword. He couldn’t aim for shit, and he never had time to – he was more of a slash-and-run kind of fighter, and his temperament wasn’t conducive to mastering range weapons.

It took a few moments for him to see the first movement in the shadows. A snarl and a few loud clicking noises gave the feeder away, and as its massive inky form emerged into the faint light, he could vaguely see its beady, red eyes glowing in its gnarled face. Honestly, he was surprised there weren’t more. If he was a feeder, he’d be all over this piece. It was _huge,_ after all.

As the feeder sprinted at Keith, its legs too long for its stumpy torso, he readied his blade and plunged it into its form when it got too close. It disintegrated with a pained squeal, and Keith couldn’t help but smirk. Too easy.

It wasn’t long before the second emerged, and then a third. He cut them down one after the other, experimenting with angles and parries as he slashed his way through the monsters. Not every silencer could go up against more than one feeder at a time, but then again, Keith wasn’t every silencer. He was different, _stronger._

All the while, he fought in the shadow of the massive mural. No matter how hard he tried to avert his gaze, for some reason his eyes kept coming back to the tiny intricacies of the piece of art.  In fact, at one point he was so enthralled with examining the upper right-hand corner that a feeder managed to strike a blow to his side, causing him to double over.

When he was prone, it reared back to deliver a slash to his throat, but he was able to stab upwards with a howl, watching with satisfaction as the monster disappeared.

_What was that?_ He thought frantically as he panted and held his side. He wasn’t bleeding, but he would definitely be bruised in the morning. Damn it.

No other feeders followed that one, so Keith risked another look at the mural. It had no definitive subject, it was just _color_ – a veritable tornado of it. In fact, the colors did seem to twirl like a vortex, spirals stretching down into the far corner and up towards the sky. Springs of color adorned the wall, stretching almost past the point of what Keith could see.

He had never spent this long around a mural. Usually, he was just called in to destroy them, or to track down the sparkers who had created them. He was never tasked with calling one in.

The longer he stood there, the more the glow of the lines began to resonate in him, like some hidden song embedded deep in his soul. He felt the vibrations echo through him like a loud noise off the walls of an empty cathedral. He had to actively resist the urge to reach out, remove his gloves, and touch the rough surface of the wall, which was scary enough without the lingering feeling of warmth that he couldn’t shrug off.

There was something… oddly comforting about the aura of the piece, something that Keith had never felt before. A halo of light seemed to surround it, the edges glowing like a portal to a new world. He felt like he could step right through it and be enveloped in sunlight, something he rarely thought about but suddenly longed to feel.

“Please step away from the wall, sir.”

The gruff voice startled him out of his trance, and he realized with a jolt that he had subconsciously inched his way towards the wall. His hand dropped from here it hovered just above the surface of the building, and he was suddenly grateful that his helmet his hid wide-eyed, shocked expression from the team of silencers that had arrived.

“Right, sorry,” Keith said quickly as he was pushed to the side by one of the silencers. One of them took a photo of the wall with their visor, then waved the others over.

He had seen silencers cover sparks before – hell, he had even _done_ the cleaning on multiple occasions – but as he watched the other silencers ready their paint guns, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of some foreign emotion rocket through his chest when the first strokes of black were made.

He knew how this would play out. The initial silencers would document the mural, and proceed to cover over it with a layer of black. The next day, or that afternoon in this case, a cleanup crew of average civilians would be paid to restore the building wall to its original color, and it would be like nothing ever happened. It happened nearly every day, and it was considered a regular occurrence to the citizens of Silencia.

As he watched them cover the wall with a strange sense of longing, he couldn’t help but wonder, _why is this any different?_

 

* * *

 

When Keith returned to the base, he quickly gave a statement to his superiors about the mural, and was sent on his way after fifteen short minutes of paperwork.

He entered the mess hall, thanks to his empty stomach’s insistence, and as he received his portion he spotted some familiar faces and weaved through the crowd of hungry silencers to set his tray down with his friends.

Well, “friend” was an odd word to use. Thace and Ulaz were more like his older brothers than his friends. They far outreached him in age and in rank, but embraced Keith like an equal as soon as he’d become a fully-fledged silencer. They taught him how to stay alive and how to fight against the feeders, showing him their best tips and tricks that they had learned when they were training.

As soon as Thace saw him, his eyes lit up. “Hail, the conquering hero!”

Keith’s face twisted in confusion. “Uh, what?”

“Ignore him,” Ulaz murmured, shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth.

“Hey, it’s not every day you get to call in a sparker mural that big,” Thace shrugged, turning his attention to Keith. “So how big was it? Ten feet? Twenty?”

“Bigger than that, but it really wasn’t a big deal,” Keith murmured, picking at his peas.

“Not a big deal?” Thace scoffed. “You’ve got the most feeder kills of any silencer, and now you’re bagging murals like nobody’s business. You’re well on your way to being the best, kid. I’m proud of you.”

“That report must have been hell, though,” Ulaz said.

“Nah, it only took me like fifteen minutes,” Keith said indifferently. “They had most of it covered. I didn’t have much to tell them anyway – it’s not like I caught the sparker that did it or anything.”

“Yeah, you know how much of a shit show that can be,” Thace snorted.

Keith quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t, actually.”

Thace gaped openly at Keith, his eyes wide with disbelief. Ulaz wasn’t as visual about his shock, but his eyebrows did raise slightly. “You can’t be serious.”

“What?”

Thace gasped, “You’ve never caught a sparker before?”

“Well I’ve been on squads that have caught sparkers, but I’ve never bagged one myself,” Keith admitted. He’d never felt self-conscious about the fact before, but he was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable.

“You’ve killed thousands of feeders, and you’ve never caught one sparker?” Ulaz asked. “That’s surprising.”

Keith chewed slowly. “How many have you two caught?”

Thace thought for a moment, and Ulaz seemed to count on his fingers silently.

“7,” Thace said finally.

“10,” Ulaz said not long after. “2 before I was twenty.”

Keith was surprised at this. As he finished off his food, he tried to recall the few times that he had seen a sparker in person, but most of the memories were few and far between, faint blurs from his time after training.

Silencers were trained to exterminate feeders, sure, but their real job was to catch the sparkers.

Sparkers were the only reason the feeders still existed in Silencia. After the new government rose and abolished expression to quell the onslaught of the feeders, the sparkers moved underground and began a rebellion against the new regime. They stole away in the night and painted buildings blue and purple and red and green, and all other colors imaginable. The feeders flocked to their art, and the silencers had to try their hardest to stop the sparks before they happened. It was a difficult job; sparkers were smart – they knew when to spark and when not to spark, and just where to run to avoid the silencers. Their powers allowed them to create entire murals in minutes, _seconds,_ permitting them to leave their marks and vanish without a trace.

Keith had been conditioned to hunt sparkers. He was the most skilled young silencer in the city. He was prepared for anything. So why hadn’t he caught one yet?

“Hey,” Thace said quietly as he watched Keith internally stress out. “Don’t sweat it, kid. You’ll get your chance.”

“Besides,” Ulaz added. “Sparker activity has dropped in the last few months. I guess they’re wisening up.”

“We’re better off for it, that’s for sure,” Thace agreed.

“And if they aren’t?” Keith spoke up.

Thace and Ulaz stared at him, uncomprehendingly. “Aren’t what?”

“Aren’t wisening up,” Keith continued. “What if they’re just planning something big, and we’re blind to it?”

Ulaz’s gaze darkened as he said, “Then God help us all.”

Keith, feeling the tension in the air, shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He grabbed his half-empty tray, slid his chair out, and announced, “I think I’m going to go take a nap. These night patrols are really taking their toll on me.”

“I hear that,” Thace guffawed. “I remember my days as a young silencer. I was running night patrols left and right.”

“Just don’t sleep through your next patrol,” Ulaz warned. “I don’t want to see you get in trouble.”

“I won’t,” Keith promised as he dumped the rest of his food and made his way swiftly through the crowd and towards the door.

His hands shook as he made his way through the blank halls of the base, passing by silencer after silencer, recognizing no one as the helmets and black suits began to blur together. Nobody’s faces were visible but his; he didn’t _need_ to have his helmet on in the base, and it never quite occurred to him that other people didn’t feel the same way. To some, the helmet was something to be proud of. Keith imagined that many like to keep it on as a reminder of their status.

He rode up a packed elevator full of other silencers and a handful of scientists clad in crisp white coats. He watched the numbers flicker up and up and up, until the doors opened up into the barracks. He inched through the gaps between bodies and burst into the open hall, thankful to have his own personal space again.

The hall curved around like a bubble, leading off to different sections of silencer housing. Most silencers lived in communal housing units with their comrades. Keith, however, was rewarded for his high feeder kill-count. He had his own quarters, at the far end of the rightmost hall. He was the only person under thirty in the entire hall, and his neighbors always gave him envious looks when he walked by. Their eyes said, “Who is this kid? Why is he here? What did he do to belong here?”

His room was sparsely decorated and mostly empty. His bed was attached to the wall, and the lights were embedded into the ceiling. He had his own closet, but hardly any clothes to put in it. He had his own chest of drawers, but nothing to place inside them. He had his own space, but no one to share it with.

He kicked off his heavy boots and peeled his suit off, revelling in how nice the air felt against his skin. He tied his hair up, wondering how it had gotten so long so fast, and collapsed onto his bed. He removed the collar from his neck with a faint _pop,_ and was about to put it on the side table when he hesitated.

His fingers traced over the collar until his pointer met a button. When he pressed it, his helmet snapped into existence, lighting up before his eyes. The cool, curved metal was chilly under his palms as he stared into the empty visor, seeing a warped version of his reflection staring right back at him.

Before he could decide against it, his fingers tapped their way over the screen of his visor, and soon the image that projected back at him wasn’t his own face, but the colorful details of the mural.

He didn’t remember taking the picture. He remembered someone _else_ taking a picture, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember how he had gotten his hands on the snapshot. Still, it was there, and it was just as beautiful as he remembered it.

His eyes drank in the image, feasting on the color like a man starved. He had never seen so much color in one place, not for more than a few moments before it was inked over, and he felt that familiar stirring in his gut once again.

His fingers itched to reach out and touch it, and when he did, his fingers only met the cool glass of the screen. It wasn’t enough.

Keith had only ever known how to silence. He was orphaned as an infant, so he didn’t know his parents. He was raised by the government, like all wards of the state, to become a silencer. He was taught to fear color and to crave the destruction of sound. He remembered the crippling fear that gripped his stomach the first time he saw a feeder in person, and he remembered the swell of pride in his heart when he struck it down. He recalled fondly how happy Ulaz had looked when Keith finally nailed his first parry with his blade, and how Thace had laughed when he sparred with him for the first time and somehow managed to knock him flat on his back.

None of those feelings compared to what he felt when he looked at the spark.

When he traced his eyes over the piece of art, it was like a new sense had awoken inside him. He felt like a blind man who had seen his first sunset after a life of unending darkness. He felt warmth in his stomach like a supernova, bursting open to deliver warmth and comfort to his entire being. Colors swam in front of his vision that weren’t necessarily part of the mural, but instead formed their own masterpieces in his mind.

Hues danced in front of his eyes as he imagined just how he would paint a mural, had he the talent of the ability. It took him a moment to realize that his fingers were no longer tracing the patterns in the mural; instead, they formed their own shapes on the surface of the visor, the pressure of his fingertips leaving streaks of oil on the pristine glass surface.

As his hands traced hypnotic circles into his helmet, his eyes drifted closed. The warmth never left him, curling around him like a cocoon of sunlight. As he slipped into darkness, he imagined himself on a grassy hill, bathed in a sun he had never seen in all its glory.

He dreamed in color.

 

* * *

 

“Throk, watch out!”

A beam of light arced overhead as Keith ducked, dragging his counterpart down with him. As they hit the asphalt, the feeder that had lunged at them was cut down by another member of the squadron.

Keith wasted no time getting up. He didn’t look back to see if Throk was following him; he had only two goals in mind: stay alive, and kill the feeders.

His sword appeared in his hand as he faced down one of the larger feeders. Its mandibles glinted like flashing daggers, illuminated by the light of the lasers flying around them. For a moment, nothing around him existed. It was only Keith and the feeder.

The feeder roared, tearing across the street towards Keith. He was ready for it – when the monster got close enough, he shoved the sword into its gut, feeling the vibration of its last cry through the metal. The blade sliced clear through to its spine, and Keith could feel the crackle of bone as the tip of the sword reappeared out of the feeder’s back, severing its delicate skin. The force of it dissipating left him reeling, his form thrown back by the gust of wind its death produced.

As he regained his balance, he felt something clamp onto his shoulder, and the spike of pain that came a moment later ripped a scream from his throat. He fell to one knee, blinded by the fire that was pulsing through his muscles, and used all of his strength to haul his assailant over his shoulder and knock it prone to the ground.

The skinny feeder was much smaller than the previous one, but it was fast. Before Keith could react, it was back on its feet, whipping around to deliver another swift blow with its tail. Keith managed to duck, feeling the appendage whiz over his head. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword as he brought it up in a sweeping arc. It cut through the feeder like a hot knife through butter, reducing it to dust.

Keith only received a short moment of respite before the other feeders were on him. He clutched his bleeding shoulder – on his dominant arm, _damn it –_ and looked around at the carnage. Over thirty silencers were called in to maintain the hoard of feeders that had appeared out of nowhere in the night. There were only ten of them left, the rest were either incapacitated or lying on the ground, dead.

Keith had never seen so many feeders in one place in his entire life, and as he looked around, he realized that they weren’t going to let up any time soon.

His hand flew to the button on the side of his helmet, which he had kept covering his face during the battle. “Ulaz, we need backup _now._ ”

_“I’m on it,”_ Ulaz’ voice replied, and he could hear the faint click of fingers over keys. _“How many casualties?”_

“I… I don’t know,” Keith dodged another swipe, and sliced the arm off the attacking feeder. “Ten deaths? Maybe more? Even more injured.”

_“God, okay,”_ Ulaz took a deep breath. _“Just hang in there. Help is on the way.”_

“I’ll try.”

As Keith cut down feeder after feeder, losing track of his body count, he could feel fatigue begin to grip his body. His joints ached with each swing of his sword, and his muscles screamed in protest as he attempted to preserve what few lives were left.

It took about ten minutes for reinforcements to come in. Keith almost cried out in relief as a flurry of lasers exited the barrels of dozens of guns, mowing down row after row of feeders. The area was a mess of neon and dust as the monsters died left and right.

The leader of the reinforcement squad made a hand motion, and half of the group broke off and ran towards the nearest side street. “Prorok, take Group A to the mural. Group B, stay here and clear out the rest of the feeders. Start taking care of the dead, and treat the wounded, but _only after_ all the feeders are killed.”

Keith drew in a deep, shaky breath as he approached the squad leader, recognizing his large build even though his helmet obscured his face. “Sendak. It’s good to see you.”

He looked down at Keith and scoffed. “Never thought I’d see the day when the great Keith Kogane gets nicked by a feeder. You should get that shoulder looked at.”

“Did you say mural?” Keith asked frantically.

Sendak nodded, charging the barrel on his gun. “That’s what attracted all these feeders. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”

“Where is it?” Keith demanded. “I want to see it.”

If Sendak was taken aback at all by his request, he didn’t show it. Then again, Keith couldn’t see how his expression changed under the helmet. “I suppose you would be a big help to the cleanup crew. You can go cover them, but you have to head to the infirmary when you’re done.”

“Thanks,” Keith said as he took off in the direction that the first group went in, ignoring the burning pain in his shoulder.

He darted down the street. Glancing around, he didn’t see any feeders follow him, but he didn’t allow himself to feel relief just yet. He still had a job to do, and he wouldn’t rest until every remaining silencer got back to the base alive.

When he rounded the corner, however, he stopped in his tracks. His breath caught in his throat.

Time seemed to slow to a halt as he stared up at the mural.

All he could see was blue, stretching up toward the sky. The entire side of a small building was covered in beautiful curves of cerulean, the strokes arcing up from each corner of the piece, creating slices of perfect circles that pulsed towards the center. The four collections of arcs resembled rainbows, the blue hues inside them varying enough to create their own personal color spectrums inside.  Keith had never seen one color create so many others before, and he was so busy scanning the edges of the spark that he almost didn’t notice the small figure that occupied the center.

The figure was dwarfed by the rest of the piece, only a foot or two high and wide. An ornate bubble surrounded the outline of what seemed to be the blue silhouette of a boy, curled into a ball with dark shackles on his hands.

Around the perimeter of the bubble, in curling script, one sentence was scrawled over the surface of the wall:

_A spark in a sea of gray._

He didn’t even register that he had taken a photo. His hand simply flew up, pressed a button, and click. The image was saved just before a great splotch of black was sloughed on top of the masterpiece, forever marring the sea of blue.

“Good thinking, Kogane,” Prorok came up behind Keith and clapped him on the shoulder. The action came with a sharp burst of pain, but he bit back his wince. “Zarkon will want a full report of this one, and we’ll need pictures to bolster the investigation.”

“Yeah,” Keith murmured. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene before him, and he found himself clinging to each inch of blue he could find. He wanted to ingrain the moment in his mind before the mural was gone. “I’m sure he will.”

He was so busy watching them cover up the spark that he hardly noticed when one of the silencers began yelling, and the situation dissolved into chaos.

_“Sparker!”_ Prorok called out as the silencers dropped everything to pick up their guns.

Keith’s head whipped up to the rooftops, following Prorok’s line of sight, and saw a faint blur of motion dart away from the lip of a roof. He heard the sound of muffled gunfire, but all the shots missed their mark.

Keith knew they were at a disadvantage. If they wanted to catch the sparker, they would need to get on his level.

His body rocketed forward before his mind could catch up, his limbs driven by pure instinct. He took a running jump and clung to the rusty rungs of an ancient ladder, scaling the side of the building as quickly as he could. He heard shouts below and the faint roar of Prorok giving commands, but none of that mattered to him. His vision tunneled as he reached the rooftop and saw the sparker take a running jump to the next roof.

He tore after the sparker, leaping from roof to roof like a frog. The buildings of Silencia were tightly packed together, and there were rarely more than a few feet of space between them. It was easy to bounce from building to building without falling.  

Keith could hear the roar of his own heartbeat in his ears. In an attempt to improve his vision, he retracted his helmet, the wind immediately whipping his hair around his reddened face. The sparker was fast, but he was faster. As he gained on the rebel, he could just barely make out their height and build. Tall, lanky, definitely male. The glint of what looked like goggles winked at him from their forehead when they whipped around to glance at Keith from behind, and in the faint light from the streetlamps, Keith could see the line of his mouth curl into a confident smirk.

Keith growled as he launched himself onto another roof. _That bastard._

He knew that his speed would only get him so far. He had to think of a plan.

A broad rooftop stretched out before him, allowing him to see most of the buildings around them. As soon as he spotted one familiar roof, he knew what he had to do.

He took a sharp turn and began to run to the left, jumping onto the roof in front of him followed by the roof directly to his right. As he ran parallel to the sparker, he could see his strides falter in confusion, but he kept on going. Keith picked up speed, feeling the burn in his lungs as he sucked down air in quick inhales., and soon he found himself slightly ahead of the sparker.

When he turned and ran towards the sparker, cutting him off, the sparker immediately shifted their direction and ran to the right. Keith couldn’t help but smile, his grin maniacal in the lamplight. He had him right where he wanted him.

He watched the sparker leap onto the last rooftop and sprint towards the edge. He lifted his leg as if to jump, but skittered to a stop when he realized that, adjacent to the building, there was only open air. There were no buildings to leap onto, except behind him, and Keith was pursing him from that direction. He had the sparker cornered.

Keith slowed to a halt, both hands clutching the hilt of his sword as he held it between them. His hair fell around his eyes as his chest heaved, and he could feel his heart thump in his chest, his pulse emboldened by the thrill of the chase.

When the sparker turned around, however, he could have sworn that his heart stopped completely.

The streetlamps below cast light over the angles of the sparker’s face, illuminating his sharp jaw and high cheekbones. The haunting glow streaked across smooth tan skin, breaking into a thick ray over two of the bluest eyes Keith had ever seen. The irises danced with life, as if his gaze was a spark in itself. Soft brown hair brushed over his temples, held back by a set of decorated blue goggles. His lithe form was covered by a loose baby-blue flannel, rolled up to the elbows and covered in patches, open over a colorful shirt that hung over his chest.

His fingertips glowed with a bright blue light, and suddenly the air around them felt crisper. Purer. Cleaner. The wind wasn’t stale, like Keith was used to in the city of Silencia, but instead held a chill that was strangely comforting. As it washed over Keith, he shivered, but not from the cold.

Like a work of art, Keith couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sparker, and his stomach dropped as he held the boy’s stare. He felt like he was freefalling, plummeting towards the earth from some high cloud of heaven. He could have broken the spell just by looking away, by ignoring the beautiful freedom in the sparker’s eyes, but Keith found that he couldn’t. No, he didn’t _want_ to.

He wanted all the freedom those eyes promised and more.

As he stared the sparker down, he saw a similar confusion run through the other’s eyes, like the boy was experiencing a similar barrage of emotions. Whether those emotions were positive or negative remained to be seen, so Keith tightened his grip on his sword and said, “Stand down.”

Slowly, the sparker’s palms turned outwards. “Easy, man. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Keith sneered, mustering all of the disdain he could from the far corners of his short-circuited, star-struck mind. “Well, that makes one of us.”

The sparker’s resulting laugh only made Keith’s scowl grow deeper. “Come on, I know that’s not true.”

Keith tensed as the sparker moved forward. He warned, “Make one more move. I dare you.”

“Careful,” the sparker teased, though there was still a shifting uncertainty in his eyes. “I never back down from a challenge.”

“I’m not challenging you, I’m warning you,” Keith spat. “Sparkers are wanted by Zarkon dead or alive. You choose: shackles or a body bag?”

“You won’t hurt me,” the sparker’s mouth settled halfway between a smirk and a full-blown grin, and Keith knew that the ghastly beauty of his face in that moment was going to haunt him for weeks.

Keith’s eyes widened a fraction, but his hands remained steady. “And why’s that?”

He watched as the sparker’s expression softened into something almost fond. The warmth in his eyes was startling as he said, “Because you took a picture.”

Keith sucked in a startled breath, his body locking in place for a split second. In that moment, the sparker brought his hands together, and the blast of blue light that ensued sent Keith sprawling. Sky tumbled into concrete that tumbled back into sky as he skittered across the rooftop, landing bruised and battered on his side, dangerously close to the other end. He blinked, blotches swimming in front of his vision, and he could feel the sting of every scrape on the surface of his skin.

He looked up, but his eyes only met open sky. The sparker was gone.

Keith didn’t remember being led off the rooftop. He didn’t remember Prorok taking him to the infirmary of the base personally after escorting the rest of the squad back to safety. He didn’t remember being told to see Zarkon at his earliest convenience, which was code for “as soon as humanly possible, if not sooner”.

All he could remember was staring at the ceiling of the infirmary, numb to the healing ray that was being applied to his skin, the final words of the sparker echoing through his mind on a constant loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip keith am i right
> 
> Anyway, a lot of you have also been asking when I plan on updating my other fic, dance with somebody. The truth is, I've been working on chapter four for about three months now, but my motivation just isn't there. I've been chipping away at it slowly, and I do plan on continuing the fic, it's just a matter of inspiration at this point.
> 
> Which leads me to my next point: I know you guys are excited about fic updates, but please don't hound creators for updates. I just want to deliver the best content I possibly can, and sometimes that takes time :) 
> 
> If you have constructive criticism, or something you'd like to talk about, you can find me on tumblr at [panglosian](http://panglosian.tumblr.com/)
> 
> As always, thanks a million to my beta [rhys](http://seabreezy.tumblr.com/)


	3. Paradise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> life goes on it gets so heavy  
> the wheel breaks the butterfly   
> every tear a waterfall  
> in the night the stormy night   
> she'll close her eyes  
> in the night the stormy night   
> away she'd fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone, long time no see!
> 
> So if you read my other fic, you probably already know this, but I've had a lot of shit go down in the past year. Since my last update, I transferred colleges, changed my major three times, was diagnosed with three different acute mental illnesses, and subsequently had to take a leave of absence from school just when I was getting used to things. I lost all my inspiration, and a lot of the joy that I used to put into my writing just disappeared. I was going to stop writing my fics all together, but I kind of picked them back up because I needed something fun. I don't get nearly enough of that anymore. 
> 
> So yeah, the hiatus? Totally unintentional. Sorry about that one
> 
> I want to get the ball rolling on this fic, and I want to finish both my ongoing fics. I am determined. It's going to happen. So thank you to all the people who stuck with this fic while I was sorting my shit out!
> 
> the song for this chapter is [paradise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRip-kvFJJY&index=3&list=PLATeyS5bPJiHjg2ifvVh4g3N2G7885SYl)

Keith had met with Zarkon several times before, but it was still a nerve-wracking experience for the young silencer.

It didn’t help that the hallway that led down to the large double doors of Zarkon’s chambers was just about the creepiest place in Silencia. The lighting was dim there, and all of the bulbs that flickered along the walls had a purple tinge to them, as if there was a poisonous haze in the air. Keith’s footsteps echoed, the sound bouncing against empty walls before disappearing either in front of or behind him. He imagined that the hall was designed to make any approaching silencer feel small, as if Zarkon’s prowess was the most imposing force imaginable.

Keith knocked on the door, the noise resounding like three raucous gunshots in the barren hall. His eyes darted instinctively towards the camera that was aimed towards the door, and when he saw it shift just slightly in the direction of the knocks, he knew Zarkon was watching. He could just barely hear the click of a lock and the whirring of gears as the doors parted to let him in. 

Zarkon’s chamber was hemispherical in design, the ceiling arching up like a dome. The same eerie purple glow that graced the hall was also present in the chambers, washing over the massive table below. Above the table, which held enough chairs to comfortably seat all of Zarkon’s esteemed generals, a hologram of Silencia slowly gyrated in midair, suspended as if frozen in time. The image, which was tinted green, extended almost halfway to the ceiling, and encompassed nearly the entire table. Every nook and cranny of Silencia could be seen, displayed in high definition, and a number of red dots moved around between the tiny rectangular buildings. Zarkon could see every silencer that roamed the city. He knew exactly where they went, who they talked to, and why. Zarkon knew all.

The man himself sat at the head of the table, his chair much larger than the surrounding ones. It looked almost like a throne, and even as he hunched over in it, resting his chin in his hands, Zarkon still exuded power.

His face was gnarled with age, his serious visage partially obscured by a helmet. Lights flashed in front of his vision, and Keith could faintly make out the blurred outlines of images and lines of text; Keith didn’t doubt that he was still receiving reports about the massacre that had occurred only hours before. Even seated, Keith felt dwarfed by the man, who normally stood around seven feet tall. Though he had nothing to fear in the safety of his chambers, he still wore heavy armor and kept a thick bayard strapped to his side. Keith had only seen him in action in videos, never in person, but he still looked ready for battle.

Keith saluted his superior, curling his fist over his heart. “Vrepit sa, sir. You requested to see me?”

“Keith Kogane.” His words were loud, resonating in Keith’s bones. His voice held a deep timbre, and almost croaked at times. “Come. Sit.”

He did as he was told. He put two or three chairs or space between himself and Zarkon, and even though he couldn’t see his eyes through the screen, he could still feel his gaze pierce right through him.

“I read the report you submitted about the… events that transpired today,” Zarkon said. “I am most disappointed in you.”

Keith’s blood ran cold, but he tried his best to calm his expression into cool passiveness. “I apologize, sir. I only had the squad’s best interests in mind. I did my best to preserve all the lives that I could during the battle.”

“I’m not talking about the battle,” Zarkon stated.  

Keith blinked owlishly. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t –”

“Do you remember what you were taught while you were in training, young silencer?” Zarkon interjected gruffly.

Keith swallowed thickly. Suddenly the huge, vaulting ceiling felt like it was pressing down on him. “I was taught many things.” 

Zarkon stood up, pushing his massive chair back with ease. He rounded the table with careful steps, training his gaze on the map of Silencia. “Weakness is an infection. Better to cut it off then let it spread.”

“I…” Keith cleared his throat, acutely aware of the pounding of his heart in his chest. “I don’t remember learning that specifically.”

“You weren’t taught that exactly, no,” Zarkon said. “But it has been integral in your training from the very first day you stepped foot in the sparring ring. Only the strongest silencers survive, and each battle they endure makes them stronger. The weak are left behind. The needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few, in matters of both necessity and mortality.”

Zarkon stepped towards the map and reached up with a calloused hand to flick the air in front of the hologram. The diagram spun around 180 degrees, showing Keith Silencia from a different angle. “Your job as a silencer isn’t to save other silencers. More often than not, your job is to kill as many feeders as you can. However, silencers have a greater goal – one which benefits the whole of society. Do you know what that goal is?”

Keith looked down at the table, unable to lift his gaze as he murmured, “Capture the sparkers.”

Zarkon nodded. “You failed to capture the sparker that created the mural – the very piece of artwork that caused this great tragedy. Since you managed to outrun all the other silencers in the vicinity, there is no footage that shows how the sparker slipped through your fingers, but I’m sure that, given the opportunity, you would not hesitate to bring this rebel to justice.”

The diagram of the map was replaced with a projection of what looked like a file. Keith sucked in a quick breath as he immediately recognized the person in the photo that accompanied the file – though the image was blurry, and taken from afar, the face of the sparker from before was illuminated by his own blue light. The image was taken, presumably, while he was sparking, his hands splayed out over a wall.

“This is Lance McClain,” Zarkon swiped his hand to the side, cycling through the data quickly. “At nineteen years old, he is currently the most powerful sparker in our records. His spark is possibly the most potent the world has seen thus far.”

“Why are you showing me this?” Keith wondered aloud.

Zarkon’s hand halted in midair, his hand tracing over the word “rebel” where it sat suspended in the file. “He is your new target. You are to devote all your time and energy to finding him. Once you do, lethal action must be taken, and you do not have the luxury of hesitation. You are not weak – do not be the piece that is cut off.”

Keith hoped that he couldn’t see the turmoil that was stirring in his gut, threatening to wrench him out of him composed state. He watched as Zarkon flipped back to the front page of the digital file, and Keith’s eyes traced over Lance’s form, ingraining the image into his mind: the curve of his mouth as he regarded his own work with unabashed joy, his thin fingers alight with blue, the familiar glint of manic freedom in his eyes.

That light didn’t deserve to be snuffed out.

Instead of saying this, however, Keith only murmured, “Of course, sir. I won’t let you down.”

 

* * *

 

Lance woke from his dream in a cold sweat.

He sucked down a lungful of air, a visceral noise of fear ripping from his throat. He panted, clutching his bare chest, feeling his pulse race under his calloused fingertips. Energy buzzed throughout his body, running through his veins like a current, and it took him a moment to realize that he was glowing. His spark had activated in the night, somehow, and his aura was thumping like an external heartbeat.

Lance scrambled to cover himself up with his sheets, but there was no way to hide the light from his roommates, and he knew from experience that it wasn’t going to die down just because he wanted it to. Luckily, Pidge rolled over in her hammock and grumbled something along the lines of “Who turned the light on?” before returning to her slumber. She’d had several late nights in the last week, and though he knew that she wouldn’t be mad if he woke her fully, she wouldn’t exactly be pleased.

Hunk, however, wasn’t so easily deterred. He sat up, his large form illuminated by Lance’s spark. His sleepy eyes glinted in the pale blue light as he rubbed his face and asked, “Lance? Dude, what’s going on?”

Lance took a deep breath, releasing his tight grip on his worn sheets. Like most things in the Castle, they were old and well-used, held together by patches and a prayer. These days, resources were tight for the sparkers. Even the living conditions were tight; they had to make a two-person room fit three, so they managed to string a hammock above Hunk’s bed big enough to fit Pidge’s tiny form. She rigged a ladder on the wall, constructing it out of rusty hooks and thick rope, and they made it work.

“It’s nothing,” Lance waved him off. “Just go back to bed.”

“You had another nightmare, didn’t you?” Hunk drew his thick eyebrows together, his face becoming less and less discernible as the blue light surrounding Lance died down, reduced to a tiny flicker in the night.

Lance hesitated, causing Hunk to sigh deeply. He couldn’t his from Hunk’s killer intuition. “Yeah, but I’m fine now.”

Hunk shifted on his bed, the ancient mattress creaking under his weight. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Lance threw off his covers, swung his legs over the edge of his bed, and immediately began to fish around the floor for a shirt. The air was always damp underground, and the last thing anyone needed was Lance getting sick. Not now, at least. “I’m going to take a walk. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Lance –”

“I’ll only be gone a little while,” Lance insisted, tugging his head through the t-shirt. He wasn’t entirely sure he was wearing it the right way, but at least he was covered. When his bare feet met the concrete floor, he shivered. He made his way towards the door, his feet making ugly peeling noises as he walked. “Go back to bed.”

Hunk gave one final stubborn grumble before Lance shut the door quietly behind him. The hallway was almost pitch black, illuminated only by dark red emergency lights that never seemed to turn off, even when there wasn’t an emergency. Though it wasn’t visible in the darkness, Lance knew how damp the walls could get; the air in the passages of the Castle was stale and stagnant more often than not, and the hallways were almost always empty at this time of night. Lance hadn’t looked at the clock before he left, but judging by the streak of drool on Hunk’s cheek when he startled awake, it was very, very early in the morning. He wasn’t going to be bothered.

Even in the dark, Lance found his way. He knew the passages of the Castle like the back of his hand. It was his home; he could traverse the halls blind if the need arose. It wasn’t long until the ceilings began to rise, and the small passages opened up into larger ones.

It was easy to get lost in the Castle. Every inch of wall was covered by a spark. The art changed daily, sometimes hourly; Lance would often lay down for a nap only to wake and find that the wall across from his room had completely changed. It was impossible to see the same wall twice, and considering how often sparkers fought for the best workspaces, Lance would be surprised if there was a single fraction of wall that was bare in the entire complex.

Most sparkers who lived underground sparked there, too – very few sparkers were still brave enough to venture to the surface and splash their art over the city of Silencia. They were content with carrying out their sparking in the safety of the Castle, where the silencers couldn’t catch them.

That was never Lance’s style. His art wasn’t meant to stay underground.

He knew the dangers. He knew exactly what was in store for him if he got caught. He’d only heard stories about those who had been captured by the silencers: endless days of torture, constant pain and suffering, psychological warfare – and that was only if they decided to let him live. Lance had forged a reputation for himself, and with that reputation came a whole slew of dangers that he hadn’t foreseen.

He couldn’t visit the surface during the day anymore. He couldn’t wander the streets like he used to as a kid, hugging close to the shadows. He couldn’t jump over rooftops, searching the sky for a glimpse of the sun through the eternal expanse of cloud.   

Lance’s legs carried him to the main hall, a cavern-like opening that made up the largest room in the Castle. The sound of his quiet footsteps echoed through the silent space, and Lance found himself hugging his arms close to his body to ward of the new chill that came when he stepped over the threshold. The air wasn’t so stale in there, but warmth never lingered very long in the main hall.

The hall, which was usually bustling with people, was eerily empty. The walls, which were covered in vibrant sections of artwork, were illuminated by the dim blue lights that lined the juncture of the ceiling, giving them a spectral aura. He felt like he was walking into someone’s dream – or dozens of someone’s, even, judging by the number of sparks on the walls. Somehow, even though he knew that the sparkers wanted others to see their work, he felt like he was intruding on something.

He found himself wandering to the far side of the hall. The closer he got, the smaller he felt in comparison to the sparks around him. Dwarfed by the artwork, he stood at the base of the wall and pressed his fingers up against the cold, concrete surface. A new spark graced his presence, covering the old sparks underneath it, but one corner of the previous mural still peaked out from underneath. It was blue – his signature blue – and as he traced curling lines over the last vestiges of his art, he felt warm. It was almost as if his body recognized the art it had created, even though it was almost gone.

Blue wasn’t a color often found in Silencia. The buildings on the surface were all varying shades of gray and metallic silver, and the only color Lance had ever seen outside of sparks was the deep, menacing purple that was stitched into the uniforms of the silencers. Zarkon’s headquarters was tinted purple as well, but somehow that didn’t feel as threatening. Zarkon couldn’t hurt him from the safety of his base. The silencers, however, constantly hunted him down. They could be anywhere, and Lance knew there would come a day when he couldn't outrun them.

_One day,_ Lance thought as he pressed his palm flat against the wall, _I won’t be fast enough._

All at once, his dream came back to him in a rush of fear and adrenaline. He was flying, as he did in many of his dreams. He soared above the rooftops of Silencia, tracing his fingers in the gray clouds above. He swooped down low, diving towards the street, only to pull up at the last second and toss a spark onto the side of a building. The surface exploded with color, the light rushing through the street like a tidal wave of paint. He ran up the wall of a skyscraper, his boots thudding against the worn surface, and when he emerged at the top he flew low over the roof so that his spark could spread to every corner.

Then his world came crashing down as he felt something stab through his ankle.

He remembers a blur of pain. He cried out, but no sound escaped as he tumbled out of the air and rolled to a stop on the rooftop. His spark had spread halfway over the area, but it was unfinished. He tried to crawl away, but every movement only accentuated the ripping pain in his foot, until his eyes snapped open and he saw it.

A sword protruded from his joint. It had stabbed cleanly through the bone with expert precision. It was angled in such a way that Lance couldn’t move without severing his foot completely from the rest of his body, and he could only watch as the wielder looked up from their crouched position, their hand gripping the hilt firmly, and locked eyes with Lance.

Lance took in the gnarled mop of black hair, and when he saw the fierce dark eyes of the silencer, he froze. His mouth, which had been curled into a snarl before, was now morphing into a triumphant smirk. The muscles in his arm tensed under his suit as he held Lance in place by the blade of his sword. A bead of sweat gleamed on his brow, streaking down the pale plane of his face.

Searing pain exploded in Lance’s foot as the silencer ripped the blade from his flesh. The silencer stood to his full height, leveling his blade at Lance’s prone body. Lance tried to crawl away, but his limbs wouldn’t work anymore. He was stuck lying on the rooftop, struggling under the watchful gaze of the silencer.

Lance watched in horror as the silencer swung the blade, and everything went black.

As his hand dropped from the wall, his mind swam with images not only from the dream, but from the previous night when he’d been chased by the silencer. Usually, when he ran from the silencers, he felt like he was on top of the world. He felt like he could stare death in the face and laugh. He felt invincible.

Lance had never been caught before. He had never been cornered, cut off like a caged animal. He could still remember how he felt his heart thumping in his ears as he stood his ground against the silencer, frantically searching for any means of escape.

All the while, his brain was a mess of incoherent thought: _I wasn’t fast enough I made a mistake he doesn’t have his helmet on I’m going to die I wasn’t fast enough I wasn’t fast enough I wasn’t –_

“It’s a little late for a walk.”

Lance jolted, spinning around in search of the voice that had addressed him. Standing in the dim blue light, illuminated an ethereal cerulean, was Allura. Her thick white hair was pinned back from her face and twisted so that its great volume wouldn’t get in the way. For once, she wasn’t in her usual uniform, but simple black leggings and a long-sleeve pink shirt. Funny, Lance had never seen her in such a color before, but it seemed oddly fitting. Her face was shiny and red, as if she’d just washed up for the night and was preparing to go to bed. With the recent spike in attacks against sparkers, Lance couldn’t imagine how late her days must have been in the past few weeks.

Despite his shock, Lance responded with mirth. “I should be asking you the same thing.”

She huffed, rolling her eyes. “The Castle is mine. I can wander wherever I please. You, on the other hand, should be in bed. You know the rules.”

Lance sighed, scratching the back of his neck. He wasn’t the biggest proponent of following rules, and having a curfew didn’t sit well with him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Allura’s gaze softened. “Bad dreams?”

“You could say that.”

“I wish I had that excuse,” she visibly deflated. “I haven’t slept through the night in weeks. Shiro has been trying to help me through counseling, but…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Lance nodded. “Sometimes it’s just you.”

Allura hugged her arms close to her body. Like this, in the sparse light of the hall, she looked much smaller than she usually did. Allura was the leader of the rebellion, and the sole operator of the Castle of Lions. Her father, Alfor, was the latest in a long line of high-profile rebels to be killed by Zarkon, and after his death she was left to run the entire operation on her own. Shiro, her right-hand man, helped shoulder the burden, but it was still hers to bear.

Usually, she was a paragon of leadership. She stood tall during meetings of her council, and spoke confidently to the other rebels who lived in the Castle. She always seemed to have a plan, or at least an idea of what she was doing. She always managed to greet every problem with an immediate solution. Sometimes, Lance forgot she was even human.

It was moments like this, though, that he was glad to be her friend instead of her soldier.

Lance looked back to the wall and asked, “Whose spark is this?”  
“A girl named Lydia,” Allura recalled. “She’s a newcomer.”

Lance regarded the black and pink swirls that adorned the wall, curling into a strange hexagonal shape over the words, _for bailey._ “It’s beautiful.”

“All sparks are beautiful,” Allura amended. “It’s a shame she covered yours up.”

“Nah, I didn’t like that one very much anyway.” That was a lie. He loved every spark that came from his fingertips. The difference was, he knew that everyone else loved their sparks just as much. Why was his work any more important than Lydia’s? “Besides, I get to jump across rooftops and paint on buildings all over Silencia. That’s _way_ cooler.”

Allura bit her lip, worrying at the skin until it turned red. “About that… Lance, you need to be more careful. Shiro told me about what happened yesterday –”

“He _told_ you?” Lance exclaimed, eyes blown wide. “That bastard! I _specifically asked him –_ ”

“Lance, sorry to burst your bubble, but Shiro tells me everything,” Allura deadpanned. “I had Pidge cross-reference the silencer you encountered in Zarkon’s system, based on physical characteristics, but…”

“But what?” Lance asked cautiously.

“It seems that Zarkon has no real record of this silencer anywhere in his database,” Allura explained. “We tried searching by relative age group, because silencers usually aren’t put on the front lines that young, but we couldn’t find any trace of him. It’s very unsettling.”

“So what, you’re saying this guy is like a secret weapon or something?” Lance lifted an eyebrow.  

“No, but I do want to find out more about him,” Allura said. “I’m having Pidge research him thoroughly, but you know how she’s been lately. I don’t know if… well, I don’t know if she has the energy to do this.”

Lance winced, immediately picking up on Allura’s tone. “She’s been working hard.”

Allura pursed her lips. “I know.”

“She’s going to find them.”

“I know…”

Lance paused, turning away from the mural on the wall. He locked eyes with Allura, blue against blue and asked, “Do you remember when we were kids, and we talked about leaving?”

She startled. “I suppose.”

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately,” Lance’s shoulders slumped. “There has to be something more than this. Something out there, beyond the horizon, there has to be something other than this. We could all just leave – run for the hills. We wouldn’t have to be afraid of Zarkon anymore, and maybe… maybe we could see the sky again.”

A flash of pain passed over her face, glinting in her eyes. “You know why we can’t do that. All of the sparkers need me. The people of Silencia, they need me. They might not know it, thanks to Zarkon’s propaganda, but they are being oppressed. I can’t abandon them. Lance, _you_ can’t abandon them.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I can’t help but wonder, though, you know?”

“I do.” The hurt had not left Allura’s face. It lingered there, an unshakable feeling.

Lane turned back to the wall and murmured, “You should try to sleep.”

Allura nodded. “And you?”

“I’ll just hang here for a while.”

“If you insist,” she said, but the hurt still lingered in her eyes. “Don’t be too long.”

Lance managed half a smile. “I won’t, princess.”

Allura snorted, rolling her eyes. It was a familiar gesture, one that Lance was used to receiving from the rebel leader. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

He didn’t offer a response. His fists clenched in the fabric of his sleeve as he watched her leave, her hair aglow with the blue streaks that embedded themselves in her white hair. In moments like this, Allura was more than just a person – she was a canvas, an open page with the capacity to hold incredibly beautiful things on its surface.

He remembered a time when he loved her. Once, years ago, he crusaded for her affections. She had been a staple in his life; they’d known each other practically since birth, and Lance couldn’t remember a time without her hugs, her soft voice, her reassuring words. As children they played in the Castle while their parents fought for a brighter future. They ran through the halls like little maniacs, tossing messy sparks all over the walls. They were free to dream and to imagine as they pleased. Throughout their teenage years they talked about building a world without oppression, where sparkers were free to create whatever they wanted. Lance would paint her murals of what he thought the sky looked like without clouds. She meticulously constructed constellations for him, even though they had never even seen the stars.

Then Alfor died, and everything changed. The dreaming stopped, and the planning began.

As Lance stared at the empty hall, his back to the murals, he pictured Allura’s face on the day she assumed her father’s role. He had never seen such determination on one face before. It was like all the pain and grief she had felt was gone, replaced by a new drive that propelled her in the direction of change. Their talks of escape ceased. She began to view his dreams as foolish, as detrimental to their goal. She never said any of this to his face, but he knew it. He could see it in her eyes whenever she caught him stared at the sky, all too aware of how the dark gray reflected in the metal sides of the buildings around him.

She was going to change the world.

What did he have, compared to that?

 

* * *

 

Keith was accustomed to being rudely awoken by sirens, but this time he was unusually unhappy about it.

The last vestiges of a colorful dream lingered behind his eyelids as he suited up, and he scowled as he tried to wipe all the memories of blue light from his mind. He had been chasing the sparker in his dream again – _Lance,_ he reminded himself, _he has a name and you should know that because you’re hunting him –_ but this time he was laughing, shooting moonbeams straight out of his smile and back at Keith.

Keith’s grimace depended. He had to get his head in the game.

He had a _job_ to do.

“What’s the situation?” Keith asked as he emerged from his room and immediately fell in line with his fellow silencers, heading towards the hangar.

Prorok was the one who responded. “Pack of sparkers. At least five spotted at once, the most seen together in over a year. They’re sparking all over the damn place, and feeders are flocking from all over. It’s all hands on deck.”

“Shit,” Keith fumbled to put his helmet on. “How many casualties?”

“At least twenty, maybe more.”

_“Shit,”_ Keith repeated as he readied his weapon.

The hovercrafts in the hangar were already fired up and ready to go. Silencers marched into their hulls and situated themselves in orderly ranks, lining up to protect the citizens of Silencia from the feeders. Keith fell into step, attempting to keep himself steady as their craft’s hatch slid closed and lurched into the air.

He couldn’t remember the last time this many silencers had been called onto the scene of a spark. Before he even got to the craft, he had watched two others take off in succession, and he wasn’t even sure how many were following them. It was going to be a nasty fight, and for some reason that got Keith’s blood pumping. He felt the roar of adrenaline in his veins as the craft whisked them over the city.

He didn’t even feel it when they began to descend into Silencia. He only felt a change when they touched down, and the hatch began to open. It never ceased to amaze him how quickly the hovercrafts could deliver them to their destination, even though he had flown in them more than enough times to be used to it.

“Prepare yourselves,” the squad leader said. “Medics, go straight to the wounded. The rest of you have only two objectives: kill the feeders, and if possible, neutralize the sparkers.”

The squad echoed back “Vrepit sa!” as the hatch fully opened and all hell broke loose.

Feeders were on them in an instant. Their snarls and growls were drowned out immediately by the sound of gunshots, but it was difficult to push out into the fray. Seeing how the carnage caused them to break rank immediately, Keith shoved himself to the front and began cutting down feeders one by one. To hell with order – he was going to save lives, no matter what Zarkon said.

He vaguely heard someone call out to him as he rushed past, but he filtered their voice out. He dodged to the left and stabbed towards a feeder, only missing by a hair’s breadth. The feeder didn’t come back for him, though; it was far more interested in the smorgasbord that was situated back at the hovercraft, where silencers were still crowded together in an attempt to stave off the monsters. Keith felt bad leaving them behind, but they were far better equipped than the silencers up ahead likely were. By all accounts, they were probably taken by surprise.

It was only when he ran a ways past the fighting did he see the murals.

They were everywhere, splayed over nearly every wall on a small street. They were explosions of color, vibrant over a backdrop of gray. Some of them were multicolored, others homogenous in their palates. One gigantic yellow mural extended over the sidewalk to Keith’s right, spilling onto both the buildings next to it and into the street. The mural held the images of hundreds of tiny birds, fluttering in a spiral. Another, which was splayed out across several windows, held massive splashes of green framed by perfect cubes of chartreuse.

It was like Keith’s breath had been knocked out from inside of him. The only thing that could snap him out of his stupor was the howl of a feeder, which had been crouched with several others next to a rainbow mural just across the street. Keith managed to get his sword up just in time for the feeder to clamp its teeth around it.

With an audible shout, Keith pushed it back and sliced its head in half from inside its mouth. Its form slumped over, disintegrating as it went, but its friends rose up to take its place. A bullet from behind him protected Keith from one, but it didn’t keep the other from swiping at his side. The blow wasn’t strong enough to break through the thick Kevlar-like material of his suit, but it did knock him to the side. He yelped as his back hit the pavement, and he barely registered the skittering sound that his weapon produced as it slipped from his grip and clattered out of reach.

The feeder was on Keith in an instant, pressing its weight into him. Feeders weren’t very heavy, but Keith was caught by surprise. He pushed back against its gaping maw, grunting as it surged forward and tried to snap at him. Its claws bit into his shoulders slowly, and the pain that rocketed through his torso when they finally broke through the fabric was blinding.

Hot blood ran wet onto the ground, but Keith didn’t have the luxury of fear. Just when the creature’s teeth grazed his chin, two bullets clipped it in succession, and the monster died right on top of Keith, falling away into nothing. Keith cried out as he turned over and crawled towards his sword. He swore he could feel where each claw entered his flesh, and his movement was greatly impeded by his new injuries.

The moment he tore his eyes away from the asphalt, he saw it. A green blur, streaking through the battlefield, stopped in their flight by a bullet.

The sparker fell, their green light flickering out as two silencers ran over and pressed their tiny form into the ground, preparing to cuff them. Keith barely caught the sight of gleaming light off their glasses as their face was pushed into the ground, their skin wet with tears. They screamed as a silencer put pressure on what looked like their injured arm, and Keith couldn’t help but wince as they tried to wriggle free.

_Why do you care?_ Keith wondered as he struggled to get to his feet.

“Keith!” One of the silencers who was arresting the sparker yelled back. “There are still more out there! You should go ahead and –”

The silencer didn’t get to finish. In a flash, he was thrown to the ground, surrounded by licks of blue light that moved like fire. The other silencer shouted out to his fallen comrade as another form exploded from the alleyway, bathing the whole street in blue light. The blue form slammed into the silencer, launching him away from the small sparker on the ground and into the building behind them. The crack of the impact was sickening, and the silencer didn’t move when his form slid slowly to the ground.

The blue light died down, and there he was.

Lance McClain, in all his infuriating glory.

Lance fell to his knees next to the small figure. They cried out in pain as he hauled them to their feet, more concerned about their escape than their condition. _“Run._ Get out of here!”

Keith’s sword shifted in his hand, and before he knew what he was doing, he was stalking towards the sparkers. The images of the dead silencers wouldn’t leave him, and he saw red. He watched the pain in the green sparker’s eyes change to alarm as they spotted Keith coming their way.

“Lance, look out!”

Lance turned around, eyes wide as Keith brought his sword up in a swinging arc. Lance’s hands flew up with a cry, and a wall of blue light deflected Keith’s strike. Keith snarled and tried again and again, each time with more strength and more conviction.

“Pidge, run!” Lance barked at his friend as he dodges Keith’s blows. “Get the others to safety. I can take these guys.”

Before Keith or any of the other silencers could react, the green sparker darted away with surprising speed, disappearing down an alley. Keith debated going after them, but all he could see was red anger. Red anger, and blue.

Lance pushed back against him, causing him to stumble and lose ground. He raised his sword, leveling the weapon with Lance’s face. He had yet to see such fire in the sparker’s eyes. All his playfulness was gone, replaced by steely determination.

Lance’s eyes flickered down to the blade, and something akin to recognition flashed over his face. “You… you’re the silencer from before?”

Keith faltered, but stood his ground. “You’re under arrest. Come quietly and you will be shown mercy.”

“I’ve only ever seen one silencer use a blade before,” Lance’s gaze slid up to Keith’s visor, and even though he knew he couldn’t see his eyes, Keith still felt the weight of their connection. “I’m right, aren’t I? Why don’t you take that helmet off again and look me in the eyes when you kill me.”

“I don’t need to kill you,” Keith said.

“Well I’m not going quietly,” Lance’s eyes narrowed. “So I don’t really see an alternative. Do you?”

Keith paused for a moment. He didn’t know why, but his hand reached up to the side of his helmet, and with a press it retracted.

Lance sucked in a breath. “It is you.”

Keith gritted his teeth and stepped forward, slashing at Lance. Lance’s quick feet carried him back, his reflexes aided by his spark, but it was close. All of the blows so far had been close. Keith had never missed his target so many times in a row, and it was beginning to wear on his patience. _Lance_ was beginning to wear on his patience.

“You’re a little young to be a sparker – _wow, that was close,_ ” he managed to say while narrowly dodging a swipe. Again. “And you seem to show up whenever I’m around. Do you have an issue with me, or something?”

“I have an _issue,_ ” Keith grunted as Lance tried to get past him in the other direction, but he spun around and stopped him in his tracks, “with all sparkers. You just happen to be my target, so just come back with me and make both of our lives easier.”

“You were assigned to me?” Lance’s smirk made Keith want to scream. “How flattering. Tell Zarky hi for me when you get back.”

_Zarky?_ Keith thought as he faced Lance down. _Does this guy have a death wish or something?_

He was so busy trying to figure Lance out that he almost missed the change in his expression from anger to confusion to muddled recognition. His forehead wrinkled as he asked, “Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

Keith was dumbfounded. “Are you stupid or something? We met on the rooftop a week ago.”

“No, not that.” Lance looked a little bit dazed. “Your face…”

Keith took advantage of his lapse in vigilance. He surged forward and cut downwards, his blow only narrowly stopped by Lance’s crossed forearms, which were reinforced with bright blue light, almost like bracers. Keith’s arms trembled, his muscles straining as he pressed fiercely down into Lance, who stared back at him with conviction. The blue light arcing from his arms illuminated the whites of his eyes.

His eyes widened into discs as Keith stared him down, purple locked onto blue. The words that left Lance’s mouth were nearly drowned out by the gunfire and chaos around them, but Keith heard them loud and clear:

“Krolia Kogane.”

Keith blinked, astonished, and in that moment Lance pushed back so hard that Keith’s sword clattered away for the second time that night. He didn’t attack though, and he didn’t flee. He just panted and stared at Keith, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

_He said my mother’s name,_ Keith thought frantically. _How does he know my mother’s name?_

“You look just like Krolia Kogane,” Lance said again. “How –”

A flurry of bullets preceded a shout, and Keith scrambled for his sword. When he straightened up, however, Lance was a blue blur in the distance. He felt his body lurch, his cells screaming at him to give chase, but his mind stepped in. He knew that it was futile.  

Lance had gotten away again, but that was the last thing on Keith’s mind.

_Krolia,_ Keith wondered as the silencers rushed past him in pursuit of Lance. _Krolia. Krolia. Krolia._

_Why would a sparker know my mother?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I did a little rearranging between chapters two and three to make them more even, so the beginning of this chapter might look a little familiar
> 
> this chapter is also unbeta'd right now, but might be revised and beta'd in the future so in the interim please be kind to my typos
> 
> thank you guys, ilysm <3 we're really in it now
> 
> [my tumblr](http://panglosian.tumblr.com/)


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